Scottish Independence Referendum - 18 September 2014

[Filuwaúrdjan]

It's going to be a ridiculously long campaign, so it makes sense to have a thread early, yeah.

On the subject of the launch, though I might be completely wrong about this is it really such a clever idea to kick off a campaign on an issue like this with glitzy parade in the company of a gaggle of Professional Scotsmen Who Now Live Abroad Because Taxes Are Lower There? I would tend to suggest that appeals to post-imperial Scottish civic nationalism and to specific grievances (whether 'accurate' or not) would be more effective than saccharine platitudes.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Most politicians, even most Tory politicians, aren't nearly that sociopathic.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

He's not joking...He's saying that the Tories would love for Scotland to secede because it would give them a near-permanent majority in Parliament.

Except, of course, for the fact that it wouldn't. It's just a delusion of gin-addled Torygraph readers. Labour is more than capable of winning a majority of seats in England and did so as recently as... er... 2005. Hey, even in October 1974 (a narrow victory but still a proper victory) Labour won more seats in England than the Tories.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

And never in the entire history of the party would the Democrats have lost an election if New York weren't a state.  But you'd have to be a joker if you thought that wouldn't be a massive disadvantage for them.

So what you're suggesting is that the Tories ought (if they knew what was good for them) support breaking up the UK (and lose all kind of important strategic and economic resources) in order to secure would would be, in practice, a comparatively minor electoral advantage? Makes perfect sense, though only after a few glasses of gin and a long stare at the attractive woman who's picture always graces the front of the paper.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Thats a good point, but Blair was a political phenomenon (back when he was popular) and can be interpreted as the exception, that proves the rule.

Had no idea that Blair led the Labour Party in the 1970s (or 1960s when, of course, Labour won an outright majority of English seats in 1966).

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Whatever England is, it isn't Bavaria...

[Filuwaúrdjan]

In your usual attempt to put people down you are rather missing the point Comrade Too-Clever-by-Half. All Social Democratic parties in Europe are much weaker than they were in the 60s and 70s so elections from back then arent really relevant when discussing future scenarios.

It is regrettably true that the Labour Party is generically weaker than it was in the 1960s and 1970s, but then (and less regrettably) the Tories are also generically weaker. And the reality of the electoral system (and the distribution of votes) means that what matters is the direct competition between the two parties.

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Southern England is mostly right-wing, yeah. But Northern England is one of the great traditional strongholds of labour and Labour, and the Midlands (when averaged out) tends to be highly volatile. A Scotlandless UK would also include Wales (of course) which always returns a majority Labour delegation to Westminster. So unless the plan is to find some way of disenfranchising everywhere north of the Severn-Wash line...

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I think the issue was more that was possible for middle class people with minority-left (trolling is fun!) views to convince themselves that the LibDems were to the left of the government, and that doing so was safe because it wasn't as though the Tories were going to win a majority, etc. Poking under the surface things always looked different; the LibDems didn't then (and don't now) really care about social policy (for example) beyond chucking a few sweeties around and making a series of very vague promises (which in practice meant a rather conservative stance), and were actually pretty enthusiastic about further economic deregulation (that great sage of our times and champion of manufacturing St. Vince of Cable was quite the advocate for abolishing what was then called the DTI. Which is interesting in retrospect). The record of LibDem-run local authorities was also strikingly conservative, and this at a time when local authorities had considerably more financial wriggle-room than at present.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

If Scotland became independent, would people living in Scotland be able to opt to keep their UK citizenship and move to England? Or would they have no choice and automatically become Scottish?

There haven't been any negotiations yet as no one has any mandate for such negotiations, but I'd guess a similar solution to what was sorted out with Ireland.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Indeed, the Québécois were actually oppressed once.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Do that again and you're banned from the forum.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

It would depend entirely on how the party were to react internally to such a defeat. I won't pretend to understand the workings of the SNP as an organisation, so can basically just note that the current duumvirate of sorts seem to have things very ordered at present, but (on 'tuther hand) that you don't have to go back that far to find very bloody factional disputes.

Regardless, I think we can be fairly sure that Salmond is not going to blame a referendum defeat on Jews and darkies, unlike a certain Premier of Quebec.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Assuming no great shift in opinion by September, they'll want it close enough so that they can legitimately call for a re-run 'soon'. Exactly what 'close enough' is is not yet clear.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I couldn't see it happening, it'd be seen as an outrage...

If we're talking actual blocking of independence in the event of a 'Yes' vote, then, sure. But the process of decoupling would take a while: Scotland isn't voting on whether or not to declare UDI.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Regarding opinion polls: try here.

Unfortunately most of the firms that have regularly asked the question are probably terrible or provenly so.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-northamptonshire-28279790

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Former MP for Liverpool Walton.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Nah, the correct strategy in referendums of this sort is always to encourage people to go 'ooh... er... is that such a good idea, really?'. You want to encourage as many people as possible to be uncertain; people who are uncertain tend to vote against change. It's better than crude fearmongering (tried for a while in this campaign to hilariously little effect) and there's no point in this 'positive vision' nonsense.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

The most notable feature of polling so far has been stability. Yes percentages - and remember that in referendum polling it is normally the case that the Yes percentage is the key figure - for the five most recent polls of all the firms surveying the referendum regularly:

YouGov: 38, 35, 35, 36, 37
Panelbase: 42, 41, 43, 40, 40
ICM: 38, 34, 36, 34, 39
Survation: 37, 40, 41, 39, 37
TNS: 32, 32, 32, 30, 30

MORI have also been polling but not so frequently.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Yes percentage when 'don't knows' are included is 42%, which is four points higher than the last YouGov poll.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

That's true, of course. But nevertheless there is now reason to believe that the Yes campaign has some momentum, which hasn't really been the case before now (except in a slow treacly sense).

[Filuwaúrdjan]

How reliable is YouGov, btw?

Decent for a British polling firm, but then no British polling firm is exactly great. This is also true of ICM and of MORI. Most of the other firms who've polled the referendum are basically dreck.

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You could do worse than wikipedia's page on it.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

While I (have to) expect a No victory, I've been very surprised at how unfocused the No campaign is at the moment; there's a hint of perhaps misplaced desperation that is starting to seep into the public consensus. From the start, I don't think that No expected it would have to even try. Now that it just might have to, it's not sure what to say.

I suspect that one issue is that no one has really agreed on what the message ought to be, which means they're left without having much of one (which still ought to be enough, of course).

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Would assume they'll all turn out anyway. If it does end up being genuinely close then it may come down to the people who don't normally vote.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I think YouGov changed some of their polling method or something (could be wrong), but this sort of polling volatility isn't really that unusual for an electoral event in Britain. Campaign events often leads to significant poll shifts, though they aren't always 'real' (c.f. all of the various Liberal surges since 1974).

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Knew you'd know

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Figures with undecideds included: Yes 47%, No 45%

We also have a Panelbase poll: No 48%, Yes 44% (52/48).

Was the data from the two companies accidentally swapped?